Moody's ($MCO) podcast mentions
On Wall Street, stocks tumbled, the Dow falling more than 600 points, the S&P and NASDAQ also closing lower. Today's rate hikes come as gas prices nationwide remain above $4.35 per gallon, due in large part to disruptions in the Middle East caused by the war against Iran. Diesel prices continue to set record highs, and oil remains above $100 a barrel. Moody's reporting this week that the Iran war has cost American households more than $1,700 on average. It's all driving backlash among voters, with just 31%, less than a third, approving of President Trump's handling of the economy. That's according to a new Reuters/Ipsos poll. Joining me now is our team of reporters: NBC News White House correspondent Yamiche Alcindor, NBC News business and data correspondent Brian Cheung, and NBC News correspondent Brian Chandler is at the G20 energy conference in Houston. And has been speaking to the U.S. Energy Secretary. Thanks to all of you for being here. Yamiche, let me go to you first at the White House.
Kristen Welker · Meet the Press · Meet the Press NOW — September 16 · 2026-09-16And Yamiche, let me ask you about something I mentioned at the top. Moody's reporting this week that the war with Iran has cost American households more than $1,700 on average. Based on your conversations with your sources at the White House, is there concern about that less than 50 days from the midterms?
Kristen Welker · Meet the Press · Meet the Press NOW — September 16 · 2026-09-16If we could put that graphic back up, it shows the average American family spending $1,700 more. That's according to Moody's, which is just really striking. If you were in this administration, how would you address this, these costs?
Kristen Welker · Meet the Press · Meet the Press NOW — September 16 · 2026-09-16Joining us to discuss yields and inflation and the macro economy, we are speaking with Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Analytics. Mark, thank you for joining us. Good to see you. We should start probably with yields which are rising, which breached 5%, which many consider to be a pretty concerning threshold for US Treasuries, for government-issued debt. What do you make of those yields? What are they telling us about the economy right now?
Ed Elson · Prof G Markets · AI Insiders Keep Saying We’re In Danger — Where’s The Evidence? · 2026-09-16Mark Zandi is chief economist at Moody's Analytics. Mark, always appreciate your time. Thank you.
Ed Elson · Prof G Markets · AI Insiders Keep Saying We’re In Danger — Where’s The Evidence? · 2026-09-16Get runway ready for The Devil Wears Prada 2 on Disney+ and Hulu. Rated PG-13. Who says Halloween only lasts one day? With Wayfair, one night of Halloween becomes a whole season at home. From larger-than-life yard decor and moody lighting to festive accents for every room in the house. Wayfair has what you need to make Halloween feel like magic all in one place. Because the best Halloween memories aren't made in just one night. They're made all season long. Shop Halloween decor now at wayfair.com. That's W-A-Y-F-A-I-R dot com.
Speaker D · The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway · China Decode: The World Order Is Tilting Toward China (Series Finale) · 2026-09-15Yes, so we, uh, we launched a new website this year and we've been working with this fantastic designer, um, and she, uh, she found this— she launched this thing called Artifacts. So if you go to acquire.fm/artifacts, you can see the artifacts we discovered from any given episode. She found the Moody's manual from 1977 and 1978 that Ken Langone referenced when he looked at the original share price of Handy Dan, which is where the founders worked before they started Home Depot, and, uh, it became interested in their company. So I, like, I thought we were pretty good at this, but what Ellie has found is nuts in terms of some of the, the old stuff that you're doing for our artifacts page.
Ben Gilbert · TBPN · The "Pacing AI" Debate | Nico Wittenborn, Scott Keogh, Mitchell Green, David Rosenthal & Ben Gilbert, Faraj Aalaei · 2026-09-14Yes. I think there'll be some of that. But I think it's been less sensitive than it has historically to, let's say, Moody's Baa or CSA Barclays junk spreads because of the fact that balance sheets for the household and for the corporate sector accurately are fairly strong and have been really since the the great financial crisis in 2008-9. You know, debt-to-income ratios have come down, are still coming down for the household sector. Corporate ratios have come off and cash levels have been pretty good. So it's made it less sensitive that we haven't seen the spreads widen out even as the economy slowed a lot in the broader part. And but I think this is how it relates a little bit, Matt. To this day's situation is the one part of the economy that's driving all the data in a good fashion is the one part that's using debt now in a big way. I mean, consumers still aren't in a big way. Most old, old era economy companies aren't. But, but the new era part that's going gangbusters with growth is using debt now for the first time. They didn't ever used to be that way. So they've kind of transformed themselves into cash on the barrelhead. We don't, we don't involve ourselves in cap spending, to one that's the old-style industrial cap spending type of risk. And it's starting to show up in some of these spreads. And I think that that sort of is concerning, given that that's the one part of the economy that's really doing well and really tugging all the rest of it along, and that it's really changed its stripes from what it's ever been historically. You know, the last part of tech that ever felt that way to me was when the Bell operating companies leading up to fiber optics, they all laid the same fiber optic cable down the railroad beds all across this country. And most of them went after that. They— no one made any money on it. So they changed their stripes. So anyway, it's good. It's a good question. This chart is, is just looking another way to look at how overdone this rally is relative to other asset classes. And this one just compares the relative performance, total return performance of the S&P stock market to the U.S. bond market.
Jim Paulsen · Excess Returns · Jim Paulsen on the Weakening Economy, Tech Bear Market Risk and the Bull Market Built on Fear · 2026-09-14Should have been, should have been. So Ken says to the CEO of this company, a guy named Gary, he says, all right, Gary, who's the best operator here in the business? And Gary said, oh, easy, Handy Dan out in California. Those guys are the best. And Ken's like, Handy Dan, what are you talking about? I know Wall Street. That company's going bankrupt. Gary says, no, no, no, no, no. Their parent, Daylan, is going bankrupt, but Handy Dan is doing great. So Ken says, okay, wait, wait, hang on. Let me go get my Moody's Manual, because this is how you checked company financials back in the day. He pulls out his Moody's Manual, his little book, and he's going through, he looks, he finds Handy Dandy, looks at the financials. Holy crap, you're right. This is a great business. But yeah, it's trading for $3 a share. And if Moody's is right, this company is going to earn post-tax net income of $1.50 a share. This year. So this company is trading at 2 years of post-tax earnings. So Ken's like, something has to be wrong.
David Rosenthal · Acquired · Home Depot · 2026-09-14Yesterday, the Financial Times reported that bankers for OpenAI and Anthropic's IPOs were seeking investment-grade ratings for both companies, pushing agencies to rate two unprofitable, unsustainable companies as if they were, well, real companies. Per the FT, the argument is that the two companies' public listings would unlock vast amounts of liquidity and improve the health of their balance sheets. By which they mean, by giving them access to lots of debt, both OpenAI and Anthropic would be able to take on lots of debt. That's really it. This is a deeply dangerous way of managing two companies that will eventually run out of money. Anthropic and OpenAI will need hundreds of billions of dollars a year to meet their $1.3 trillion of compute commitments. And even if they're somehow rated investment grade— and by the way, S&P, Moody's, if you're listening, if you fucking do this, you deserve nothing but suffering. If any of you have any, any chance you hear this, fuck you guys. You're gonna do it again, aren't you? But let's say they become investment grade. They're going to need so much debt, so much debt with onerously high interest because they'll be one rung above junk, which means that unless they magically find ways to become profitable and generate massive amounts of cash, I don't see how they service the debt they're going to need. And I must be clear, their compute commitments— OpenAI is expected to spend $750 billion through 2030. How do they afford that? They lose tens of billions of dollars a year. I'm considered a firebrand for asking these questions. And these companies, like I said, have over $1.3 trillion in compute commitments, which means, like I said, they're going to owe hundreds of billions of dollars of compute payments by 2030. An unbelievable sum that dwarfs the operating expenses of Meta, around $141 billion a year, and Microsoft at about $175 billion a year. In fact, based on the projections, I'm pretty sure Anthropic or OpenAI is going to spend more than those two numbers combined at some point. And when I say spend, intend to spend, they're going to need the money, which they don't have.
Ed Zitron · Better Offline · Managing The Situation · 2026-09-09This episode is brought to you by Palmolive. Family time isn't just the big moments. It's weeknight dinners, sitting around the table, everyone talking all at once. So when the plates are empty and the sink is full, use Palmolive Ultra. Palmolive's most powerful formula removes up to 99.9% of grease, leaving your dishes sparkling clean. And the new convenient pump makes cleaning even easier, so you can spend less time tackling dishes and more time together. Shop now at palmolive.com. Who says Halloween only lasts one day? With Wayfair, one night of Halloween becomes a whole season at home. From larger-than-life yard decor from outdoor and moody lighting to festive accents for every room in the house. Wayfair has what you need to make Halloween feel like magic all in one place. Because the best Halloween memories aren't made in just one night. They're made all season long. Shop Halloween decor now at wayfair.com. That's W-A-Y-F-A-I-R dot com.
Speaker D · Pivot · Ina Garten’s Next Course? A Podcast | On With Kara Swisher · 2026-09-08That's odoo.com/vox. Who says Halloween only lasts one day? With Wayfair, one night of Halloween becomes a whole season at home. From larger-than-life yard decor and moody lighting to festive accents for every room in the house, Wayfair has what you need to make Halloween feel like magic all in one place. Because the best Halloween memories aren't made in just one night. They're made all season long. Shop Halloween decor now at wayfair.com. That's W-A-Y-F-A-I-R dot com.
Speaker D · Pivot · Ina Garten’s Next Course? A Podcast | On With Kara Swisher · 2026-09-08In fact, even Standard Poor's and Moody's have downgraded our credit, but they haven't downgraded it enough. We were a much better credit risk back then, 50 years ago, 100 years ago. We were a much better credit risk. We have a lot more debt. When you have $40 trillion in debt, when you're running these massive budget deficits, You are a worse credit risk, uh, than when you have balanced budgets and when you don't have a lot of debt. Look, any individual, if you go and apply for a loan and they look at, you know, your, your, your numbers, they want to know what your income is, how much debt you have. They're more likely to lend you money if you don't have a lot of debt. If you've maxed out on all your credit cards you know, you're going to get turned down. The less debt you have, the better the credit risk you are. When you have a lot of debt, you're a risky, uh, a borrower. Now you could argue that, well, the U.S. isn't going to default. Okay, but the risk is that we're going to inflate, because when we don't have the ability to repay our debts legitimately through taxation because the debts are just too big in relation to our tax base and our revenue, then we're gonna resort to the printing press. And the US is far more likely to repay its debts in inflated dollars now than it was 50 years ago, 100 years ago. So we are a worse credit risk. In fact, you could argue that we've never been a worse credit risk than we are right now. So what the hell is he talking about? You know, we're such a great credit risk And, you know, he always brings up Switzerland to say, look, you know, look at Switzerland, they're, you know, their rates are so low. Yes, precisely because they are a good credit risk. That's why they don't have these big deficits. And I, you know, I'm going to get into that in a bit.
Peter Schiff · The Peter Schiff Show Podcast · Bond Yields Just Hit a 2007 High... Every Buyer Became a Seller · 2026-09-06Okay, so back in— go back to February. So it seemed like every other week a big liquid part of the market was being priced for obsolescence. We talked about software. At one point it was insurance brokerage. At one point, Moody's wealth management. I'm CBRE, we're also on the same page.
Dan Scali · The Compound and Friends · How to Pick Stocks Like Morgan Stanley · 2026-09-04Upfront payment of $45 for 3 months, $90 for 6 months, or $180 for 12-month plan required. $15 per month equivalent. Taxes and fees extra. Initial plan term only. Greater than 50 gigabytes may slow when network is busy. See terms. Who says Halloween only lasts one day? With Wayfair, one night of Halloween becomes a whole season at home. From larger-than-life yard decor and moody lighting to festive accents for every room in the house, Wayfair has what you need to make Halloween feel like magic all in one place. Because the best Halloween memories aren't made in just one night. They're made all season long. Shop Halloween decor now at wayfair.com.
Speaker D · Prof G Markets · Geopolitical Expert: Iran War May Drag On For Years · 2026-09-02